I love my sister-in-law and brother dearly, so when they became pregnant I knew I wanted to throw them a baby shower! I thought about having it at a cafe or restaurant, but after looking all over Pinterest for inspiration I knew a cafe wouldn’t allow me to accomplish the look I was going for. So, we created a bistro-style setting at my grandmother’s home in Brentwood. A big thanks to Molly at Tre Chic Affairs for helping me narrow down my ideas…I know they were all over the place. To start, I definitely knew I wanted a dessert table focal point and a bowtie theme. So, we went from there. With so many DIY components to this shower, I quickly became best friends with my hot glue gun.
The mason jars, which served as drinking glasses, and vases, which contained beautiful flowers provided by My Splendid Sentiments, were decorated with blue and yellow bowties. The bowtie and button napkins, which my poor Christian helped me hot glue at the eleventh hour, were an especially big hit. I also took candle votives and hot glued streamers to create some accent pieces. My favorite décor was the vertical bowtie banner which seemed to take me hours to make, cut out of card stock and hot glued to twine. Another fun project I did for the shower was taking an old frame, painting it and adding wire gauge to hang my brother and sister-in-law’s childhood photos. I found all of these fun projects on Pinterest. My mom did all the cooking, as usual, and the food was amazing! I love having an Italian mother! And a funny thing about the dessert table…I couldn’t find an available baker to do what I needed, so I ended up doing it. We had cake pops and cup cakes with gumpaste bowties on top, a ruffled carrot cake, bowtie sugar cookies, lemon bars and seven layer bars.
In the end, after all the blood, sweat, and hot glue gun burns, the shower turned out wonderfully! I had a few guests tell me that I should consider changing my profession from photographer to party planner. I thought, with all the work that went into this party, I couldn’t imagine doing it on a weekly basis!
